CHAPTER XXXI.

Sir Francis Varney is in what he calls his own apartment.
It is night, and a dim and uncertain light from a
candle which has been long neglected, only serves
to render obscurity more perplexing. The room
is a costly one. One replete with all the appliances
of refinement and luxury which the spirit and the
genius of the age could possibly supply him with,
but there is upon his brow the marks of corroding care,
and little does that most mysterious being seem to
care for all the rich furnishing of that apartment
in which he sits.

His cadaverous-looking face is even paler and more
death-like-looking than usual; and, if it can be conceived
possible that such an one can feel largely interested
in human affairs, to look at him, we could well suppose
that some interest of no common magnitude was at stake.

Occasionally, too, he muttered some unconnected words,
no doubt mentally filling up the gaps, which rendered
the sentences incomplete, and being unconscious, perhaps,
that he was giving audible utterance to any of his
dark and secret meditations.

At length he rose, and with an anxious expression
of countenance, he went to the window, and looked
out into the darkness of the night. All was still,
and not an object was visible. It was that pitchy
darkness without, which, for some hours, when the
moon is late in lending her reflected beams, comes
over the earth’s surface.

“It is near the hour,” he muttered.
“It is now very near the hour; surely he will
come, and yet I know not why I should fear him, although
I seem to tremble at the thought of his approach.
He will surely come. Once a year—­only
once does he visit me, and then ’tis but to take
the price which he has compelled me to pay for that
existence, which but for him had been long since terminated.
Sometimes I devoutly wish it were.”

With a shudder he returned to the seat he had so recently
left, and there for some time he appeared to meditate
in silence.

Suddenly now, a clock, which was in the hall of that
mansion he had purchased, sounded the hour loudly.

“The time has come,” said Sir Francis.
“The time has come. He will surely soon
be here. Hark! hark!”

Slowly and distinctly he counted the strokes of the
clock, and, when they had ceased, he exclaimed, with
sudden surprise—­

“Eleven! But eleven! How have I been
deceived. I thought the hour of midnight was
at hand.”

He hastily consulted the watch he wore, and then he
indeed found, that whatever he had been looking forward
to with dread for some time past, as certain to ensue,
at or about twelve o clock, had yet another hour in
which to prey upon his imagination.